


Trapped

by RayByAnotherName



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Drowning, Gen, Mental Link
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:26:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25832023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RayByAnotherName/pseuds/RayByAnotherName
Summary: How did Quynh survive, with her mind intact, on the ocean floor for 500 years. Here's a short one-shot that grew out off my attempt to write some meta.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko
Comments: 16
Kudos: 49





	Trapped

Quynh has not gone crazy at the bottom or the sea. Sure that first hundred years was a close thing - the constant drowning, the panic, sometimes her body would die from shock or pressure before the water could do its work - but then… Then Quynh realized only her body was trapped on the ocean floor.

It took more years than she could count to push her conscious mind beneath her subconscious - mostly because she’d long since lost track of time even before the iron coffin thing, but that was humanity’s fault, they kept changing how the years were counted - and once her body was thrashing and drowning as a reflex Quynh had a lot of time to think.

Sure, she was still trapped, but the back of her mind was a lot nicer than the bottom of the ocean. And eventually, she wasn’t alone in there.

Andy had been an open book their whole long lives together and Quynh replayed those memories, replayed moments of soft touches and of harsh words.

“This probably isn’t healthy ya know?” The facsimile Andy drawled. Quynh merely smiled at the way her lips tugged up into a smirk.

Her hair was shorter than when Quynh last saw it, but Andy had been complaining about braids for nearly a millennia, surely she’d give in to the temptation again to chop it off soon. Short hair on women tended to come back into trend at least once a century.

“Health is far from my top concern right now,” Quynh leaned back to rest on her elbows.

The room she’d constructed was a cross between a tent she’d once shared with Andy - thick pelt rugs on the floor and wooden furniture - and an old mine they’d started storing their mementos in - which is to say, Quynh had cluttered her escape room with every memory she could.

Somewhere on the walls was a painting Quynh had been working on before she’d been sunk. It was Nicky and Yusuf in their finery - simple cloth embroidered in complementing colors. It sat somewhere above the sea with flat colors, likely accumulating dusk. Here, it was finished, the golden and silver paints shimmering over the immortal lovers as they stared into one another’s eyes.

“If I ever get back, I’ll have to restart my painting,” Quynh whined to Andy, a pout puckering her lips.

“You’ll have to relearn to paint,” Andy stood with a groan and stretched her hands above her head, “Your muscles may not atrophy, but your skills will.” Quynh hummed, nodding.

When the young immortals came to life for the second time, waking startled and alone, Quynh snuck into their dreams. With Booker it had been difficult - she’d never tried it before after all - but once she was in, she saw her friends from the eyes of a too young Frenchman.

“You’re quite melancholic,” Quynh huffed, arms crossed, and glowered at her mind’s Andy. The facsimile had begun to drink more, taking on the traits that Quynh observed through Booker’s mind.

“300 years of looking and I still can’t find you,” Andy plopped back into a high back chair that Quynh had seen Booker eyeing through a window. “Melancholy is the best option.”

“It’s not good for the young one,” Quynh snapped, brows furrowed, “He is already upset, losing his family little by little. He is too close to them.”

Andy’s chuckle was wry, “You were always the people person Quynh, not me.”

Her connection with Booker persists and Quynh wonders what he sees when she sneaks in through their shared dreams. Probably nothing good, she imagines.

It’s been so long since she ventured outside the safety of this room beneath her subconscious and Quynh is unwilling to test her ability to slip in and out.

And then Nile wakes up without a slashed throat and Andy stops healing. Quynh doesn’t have a choice, she doesn’t even think before she’s shoving at iron walls for the first time in centuries.

But now…well, 500 years of salt water and currents and ocean pressure have done their damage. With the adrenaline and rage pulsing through her body again. Quynh breaks one join and then another. Iron nails popped from their slots and Quynh slipped into open water.

Her arms struggled against the current and her legs kicked vigorously. She died three times before her head breached the top.

The first gasp of air burned in her lungs. So did the second and third. Quynh tread water, turning slowly to search for some glimpse of a shoreline. None appeared.

Quynh closed her eyes and focused on Booker. Her connection with him was strongest and she let it guide her. Flashes of old stone walls and empty bottles gave her nearly nothing, but she swam as if they were a compass pointing her north.

Quynh’s sputtered out water as she cursed into the air. Waves crashed against her face and she spent nearly as much time spitting at salt water as she did swimming in it.

“You better as hell not be dead, Andromache,” she whispered harshly to the shore as one finally broke on the horizon.


End file.
